1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an endoscope system including an endoscope having an insertion section to be insertable into a cavity under inspection and an operation section to which a proximal end of the insertion section is connected, and a disposable protection cover having an insertion section cover for covering the insertion section of the endoscope and an operation section cover for covering the operation section of the endoscope.
2. Related Art Statements
An endoscope system has been widely utilized for providing diagnostic and therapeutic indications for coeliac cavities of patients and for internal inspection of mechanical structures. To this end, various kinds of endoscopes have been developed. For instance, in order to inspect or treating the oesophagus, stomach and duodenum, upper endoscopes have been utilized. Further, colonoscopes have been developed to examine colons and sigmoidoscopes have been proposed to inspect rectums and sigmoid colons. When the endoscope, is used an insertion portion of the endoscope has to be inserted into a cavity of a patient, so that the outer surface of the insertion section of the endoscope is contaminated with living tissues and liquids. Such a contaminated endoscope could not be successively used for other patients. Therefore, once the endoscope is used to diagnose and/or treat a patient, it is necessary to clean and sterilize the endoscope. Of course, the cleaning of the endoscope requires a substantial amount of time and during this cleaning time, it is impossible to perform the endoscopic procedure by using this endoscope. In order to mitigate such an idle time, it is necessary to prepare a large number of endoscopes. However, endoscopes are rather expensive, so that it is practically difficult to prepare a large number of endoscopes, particularly in a small hospital or clinic. Therefore, in almost all hospitals and clinics, in practice, after the endoscope has been used for examining or treating a patient, the endoscope is immediately cleaned. Typically, this cleaning requires several minutes to ten minutes. In order to effect complete washing and sterilization, the cleaning has be to performed for several tens of minutes.
Further, the endoscope has various channels such as an air channel, a water channel, a suction channel, and a forceps channel which extend along the insertion section from a proximal end to a distal end thereof, and these channels, except the forceps channel, are connected via tubes to respective devices such as an air supply pump, a water supply pump, a water suction pump and an air suction pump. These channels are subjected to the contact with living tissues and liquids. However, in order to clean these channels of the endoscope completely, a relatively long period of time is required. Thus, the endoscope can not be utilized efficiently during the long cleaning time. In a large hospital or clinics, a large number of endoscopes may be prepared in order to mitigate the problem of cleaning time. However, this solution results in an increase in the operating costs. Further, in small clinics, it is practically impossible to prepare a number of expensive endoscopes.
Moreover, the endoscope might be broken during cleaning and the usable life of the endoscope is liable to be shortened by the cleaning.
In order to avoid the above explained various problems, there has been proposed an endoscope system, in which the endoscope is covered with a disposable protection sheath-like cover having channels formed therein. For instance, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,721,097, 4,741,326, 4,825,850, 4,869,238, 4,991,564, 4,991,565, 5,050,585 disclose various kinds of disposable protection sheath-like covers having channels formed therein. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,646,722, there is shown an endoscope system in which the endoscope is covered with a protection sheath, while a tube having channels formed therein is inserted into a U-shaped cutout formed in an outer surface of the endoscope along a longitudinal axis thereof. Upon diagnosis, the insertion section of the endoscope is covered with the protection sheath, and after the inspection, the sheath is removed from the insertion section and is then discarded. Therefore, it is no longer necessary to clean the endoscope after every the inspection.
In the above mentioned U.S. Patent Specifications, the protection sheath-like cover is constructed to cover only the insertion section of the endoscope, but does not cover an operation section of the endoscope. It should be noted that the operation section of the endoscope is handled by doctors and operators and thus is brought into contact with the living tissues and liquids of a patient. Therefore, in order to remove the contamination of the operation section of the endoscope due to such living tissues and liquids, it is advantageous to cover not only the insertion section, but also the operation section of the endoscope. In European Patent Publication No. 0 349 479 A1, there is disclosed an endoscope system, in which not only the insertion section, but also the operation section of the endoscope are covered with a disposable protection cover. That is to say, the protection cover comprises a sheath-like portion for covering the insertion section of the endoscope and a bag-like portion for covering the operation section, said sheath-like portion and bag-like portion being integrally formed. It has been also proposed to form the sheath-like portion and bag-like portion as separate covers. For instance, in European Patent Publication No. 0 341 719 A1, there is proposed another known endoscope system, in which an insertion section of an endoscope is covered with a sheath-like disposable protection cover and an operation section of the endoscope is covered with a bag-like cover disposable protection which is mated or joined with the sheath-like cover in order to prevent the contamination through the junction of the sheath-like cover and the bag-like cover.
At the actual examination site, various kinds of endoscopes having different lengths, shapes and dimensions are prepared. Particularly, the shape and dimensions of the operation sections differ from respective endoscopes. In such a case, it is necessary to prepare a plurality of operation section covers having different shapes and dimensions, and therefore the operator has to select a desired operation section cover from a plurality of operation section covers. This selection is rather cumbersome and there is the danger that the suitable operation section cover sill not be selected. If an incompatible operation section cover for the endoscope to be used is erroneously selected, the operation section might not be covered sufficiently or the operation section cover might be broken.
Further, after the examination, the endoscope has to be removed from the disposable protection cover and the used cover has to be discarded. In order to carry out this removing operation in an easy and positive manner, it is necessary to use a supporting apparatus which can support the endoscope with the disposable protection cover. When a part of the used disposable protection cover is brought into contact with the floor of the examination room during the removing operation, the floor is contaminated by the used disposable protection cover. However, there has not been proposed such a supporting apparatus.